I ran into an issue today where I needed to get a themed views title from within a views row style template file (tpl). I tried using drupal_get_title() and menu_get_item() but the title elements were all blank for these. Next I inspected the $views object looking for the themed title but it was not listed. Finally, I discovered within $views->build_info the title and substitutions variables.
[ title ] => My Views Title - %1
[ substitutions ] => Array
(
[ %1 ] => My Views Substitution
[ !1 ] => My Views Argument from the URL
)
After that, getting the themed title was easy using the t() function.
$title = t($view->build_info['title'], $view->build_info['substitutions']);